The radiating programmer

Radiating information is not free; it takes time. You need to find a balance that makes sense. I estimate I spend one or two hours per week writing what I did or project updates. I usually leave it for the last part of my day. It doesn’t interrupt my main focused work, and it doesn’t happen every day. It’s also a muscle to train. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

And whenever it feels like a chore, I remind myself that it is a chore that lets me spend most of my time doing what I like.

I’ve noticed that humble people tend to share too little information. They want to avoid the risks of appearing arrogant. They want the work to speak for itself.

These are good motivations. Nobody wants to work with the arrogant one. And the work should be good enough to speak for itself.

Distilling a week’s worth of work down into a digestible paragraph or sentence is a skill. It is an amplifier to the work that speaks for itself. And the work that won’t hold water in two weeks time.

Summarizing accomplishments is an extract of the raw goods. Good work can be communicated in brief summaries. This signals that the essence of the problem being solved was understood. Shotty work makes for disjointed summaries. The person is trying to get to the essence of the problem for the first time in reflection.

You hear about this all the time. A thoughtful person goes to write the git commit. While writing about the problem and their solution they uncover a new understanding of the problem and a clearer solution. They don’t settle for first impressions and first drafts. Their own writing is a feedback loop that improves their writing.